


A Window and a Pigeon with a Broken Wing

by Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory



Series: Bloodlines [6]
Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Dark, Disturbing Themes, Drug Abuse, Dubious Morality, F/M, Incest, Mildly Dubious Consent, spousal abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 01:09:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2673209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory/pseuds/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When had she become this creature, wild and fey and maddening? He remembered pigtails and scrapped knees and adoring eyes, a time when she had thought that he could do no wrong.</p>
<p>Could be a prequel to "It Could Be a Bomb or a Bullet or a Pen" or could be another universe entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Window and a Pigeon with a Broken Wing

Their dad was in the army. It was a blessing in disguise, a new identity every year. By Senior year, 1971, he had it down to an art: Dad was a badass and they’d lived all around the world. Dad was a mild-mannered file clerk; they’d lived all around the continental U.S., but Sam and John hung eagerly upon his every word.  
“You’re so full of it.” She rolled her eyes on the way through the den with a basket of laundry on her hip.  
“Shut up, Birdie, you don’t even know what we were talking about.”  
“You’re talking about the war. You’re always talking about the stupid war and it’s all bullshit.”  
“Yeah, well, nobody asked for your opinion, little girl, so fuck off,” John said.  
“Don’t talk to my sister like that.” His voice was dangerously low.  
“I can take care of myself!” She made a rude gesture at him and stormed off.  
“Is that why you call her that?” Sam asked.  
Elizabeth had been Mom.

“You look like an idiot.” She giggled, perched precariously on the porch railing, her long tan legs swinging carelessly, casting shadows in the moonlight.  
“You’re high.” He was trying to disassemble and reassemble one of Dad’s guns in under a minute… admittedly without success.  
“Maybe…” She just kept laughing. “At least I’m not a baby killer!”  
He set the gun down beside him, his gaze on her intense. When had she become this creature, wild and fey and maddening? He remembered pigtails and scrapped knees and adoring eyes, a time when she had thought that he could do no wrong. “Make love not war, is that what your new friend Mary Jane says, Birdie?”  
“Nuh huh.” She hopped down. “That’s what Gandhi said. That’s what MLK said.” She bent over, the straps of her sundress falling down her arms. “That’s what Jesus said.” She planted her hands right on his thighs making him twitch. “He said, ‘love everybody’…even squares like you, Red Reddington.” Her tongue was lazy in his mouth.  
He grabbed her by the hips, pulling her into his lap, some primal instinct overwhelming him, and she moaned shamelessly, rubbing against him. God, he’d never been so hard. Better him than some deadbeat, some peacenik, some coward, “I’m going to fuck you.”  
Her blue eyes danced. “Yeah, and then you aren’t going to want to go to ‘Nam anymore.”  
He didn’t.  
He went anyway.

“You married him?”  
“What was I supposed to do? Build a widow’s walk?” she hissed, casting worried eyes behind him to the living room.  
“Birdie…” She winced…too much for the pressure with which he had grabbed her shoulder.  
As soon as he let her go, she pulled her sweater hastily back up, hiding the bruises. “You don’t understand, it isn’t--”  
All he could hear was white hot fury roaring in his ears.  
“What the fuck, Red?”  
“If you ever lay so much as a finger on her again--”  
John spat out blood, suddenly grinning. “You want her, Red? You can have her. Yeah, you can figure out what to do with her when you come home and she’s sucking off your bosses for coke.”  
John shoved him angrily out of the way, the screen door slamming behind him.  
She gazed up at him with a tired resentment. “Now look what you did…”  
“What I did!”  
“Yes, what you did! You were supposed to stay! You were supposed to choose me!”  
He caught her around the waist before she could follow John and just held her, breathing in the scent of her hair, patchouli. He hates patchouli…it reminds him of her. She turned in his arms burying her head in his chest. “I wanted to. God, Birdie, I wanted to.”  
It wasn’t that simple.  
It was never that simple.

“Hey, where are you going?” she asked, blinking sleepily in the predawn light.  
He didn’t have a proximal answer, only an ultimate one.  
“Libya.”  
“Liar. You’re such a fucking liar,” she whispered, tears forming in her eyes, drawing the sheet up around herself as if it might hide what they’d done.

“A baby needs a father.”  
“And out of the, I’m sure numerous, plausible options, you still couldn’t find a man more suitable than your husband?”  
She wouldn’t take the bait, just changed the subject without changing it.  
“Surely you jest?”  
“Her husband left her. She’s lonely. You’re lonely.” She looked at him in that way she would, like she really did love him just the same as “everybody.” “You’d like her.”  
“I’m not going on a date with your friend from Lamaze!”

He did like Carla. She was smart and more than a little jaded.  
“So you are in love with her.”  
Such a waste of a perfectly good croquette, suddenly caught in his throat.  
Once he finished choking, he regarded her anew.  
“Why did you agree to this?”  
She shrugged, taking a sip from her glass. “I’m seven months pregnant and single. What was I going to pretend I had to do on a Friday night?” 

He grew to love her. It sounds trite, but he did. He grew to love her and her daughter as his own and then Birdie came to him with tears staining her face and a little girl clinging to her legs.  
“Come on, Girls,” Carla took one little hand in each of hers, “why don’t we go play in the snow?”

“It’s John,” she wouldn't look at him, “he’s in trouble. We needed money and…”  
When she blew her nose on the handkerchief he offered it came away bloody.  
He stared down into her red-rimmed, pleading eyes and said the only thing that came to mind. “You disgust me.”  
Anger flashed across her face.  
“I always have, haven’t I?” She started peeling off her clothes, layer by layer. “That’s always been your dirty little secret. You like disgusting things. You love filthy, messy, bloody, disgusting things: power and money…and me.”  
She stood defiantly in the middle of his kitchen naked as a jaybird.  
“How dare you?”  
She stared up at him sullenly.  
“How dare you accuse me of holding you in contempt, when you've done nothing but deride me? Baby killer indeed, who do you always come running to, Birdie? Why should I do your dirty work?”  
She shook her head, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks, her voice small. “I never wanted anyone to get hurt, I just thought--”  
“No, you didn’t think. You never think. You’re a selfish, naïve child!” He paced the room.  
She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “I’m sorry. I just thought if something happened, I’d want Lizzie…” She trailed off, scrubbing the tears away angrily. “Never mind, I should have known I couldn’t count on you for anything.”

“You should just go.”  
“I’m not driving to Greenville at one in the morning on Christmas Eve.”  
Carla sighed tiredly. “You aren’t going to sleep until you know she’s ok.”  
She was right.  
He was almost too late…too late for Birdie, but not too late for their daughter.

She is not her mother. She’s a contradiction, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, hard and soft, Capricorn on the Cusp of Aquarius.


End file.
